A Texas woman sat in her car, holding a boxed bottle of Gucci Guilty. She had just bought it at Ross. Something about the box seemed off, so she started recording.
As first reported by BroBible, Nitza Peña, a realtor, shared the clip on TikTok as @penanitza. The video has about 208,000 views. Instead of fragrance, she found a small bottle of Colgate mouthwash inside.
The box appeared to be in its original packaging when she held it up. “I just bought this, just opened it from Ross,” she said at the start of the video. She added that she did not think much of the purchase at first.
The box wasn’t right
Her doubts grew once she began to open it. She said “it doesn’t feel right.” Roughly 25 seconds in, she pulled out the inner packaging and the fragrance was not there. She lifted out a small blue bottle of mouthwash. “What the hell is this, Ross?” she asked. The video does not show how the mouthwash ended up inside the Gucci box, and Peña does not say who may have put it there.
@penanitza I went back and they returned it but I was so scared they were going to not return it 🥴😭 #parati #paratiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii #fyp #rgv #ross
♬ original sound – Nitza Peña, REALTOR®
Peña’s concern then turned to the return. “And now I don’t even know if they’re gonna return it because of this,” she said. In the video’s caption, she wrote that she went back and the store accepted the return, though she had been scared it would not.
Some commenters focused on Ross’s return policy. “Girl Ross will take back anything,” one user commented. Another wrote, “This is exactly why we stopped doing returns on fragrance at my Ross.”
Others said some Ross locations have stricter rules for fragrance returns. “There are no returns for fragrances in Ross stores. Before purchasing it, the cashier says it clearly,” another user wrote. The comments indicate that some shoppers have encountered different rules or explanations about fragrance returns at Ross locations.
BroBible connected the incident to return fraud, which is a common problem in retail. Examples include returning used merchandise or replacing a genuine product with a dupe or another item. Shoppers have reported unexpected contents in packages before, although nothing in Peña’s video confirms that return fraud was involved here.
According to Ross’s return policy, merchandise that is unused, unworn or unaltered can be returned within 30 days with the original receipt for a full refund to the original form of payment. Returns without a receipt require valid photo ID and may be refunded as store credit or exchanged at the item’s current selling price. The policy does not specifically mention fragrance.
